Equipment

Was working with a good player yesterday and he was telling me about a fitness and club fitting experience he had with one of the major manufacturers at their home in San Diego, CA. A couple of items stood out to me.

On the equipment side, the top and bottom of the bag are pretty straight forward in terms of fitting, making sure you’ve got a good driver that’s setup the correct way for your game as well as getting your wedge lofts, lies and lengths are the low hanging fruit with equipment. Fairly straight forward and most anyone should be able to get you pretty close to optimal. The high middle part of the set is where you should really find someone who knows their craft.

My players experience in San Diego was one of fitting to specific distances, not clubs. His club fitter worked him through a variety of lengths and lofts of hybrids, 4 woods, 7 woods, all in hopes of accomplishing two important pieces for his game. Getting the ball to fly the same height, as in all of your clubs should apex about the same height, typically 70-100 feet depending on speed. The second being proper gaps between the high middle part of his bag. Once you get out of the irons, say 5 or 6 being your lowest iron, find a great combination of hybrids and high lofted fairway woods with the right length and shaft to make the long approach part of your game much easier.

I’ve had multiple people this spring switch out of low irons, four and fives, and make the change to higher flying easier to hit hybrids and fairway woods, all making the game much more fun and enjoyable. Another player calls his new hybrid the “moneymaker”.

If you’re swinging the club a bit on the slower side, make sure you don’t have multiple hybrids in your bag that are going almost the same distance. This is where finding a great fitter can be super helpful. Playing around with lengths of clubs and lofts you should see at least 10 yards of difference in two clubs. You shouldn’t hit two different clubs on a launch monitor and have the ball flying a yard or two different, just a waste of a club in your bag.

Take some time this spring and get everything dialed in, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Try something new and good luck!